If “Vibe Coding” is what happens when engineers rely on AI to write code that feels right but lacks structure, then “Prompt-and-Pray” is the product manager’s equivalent: improvising AI prompts that sound smart but skip the hard parts like clarity, ownership, and tactical fit.
It’s not laziness. It’s a phase. But if your team stays there, you’re not building fluency, you’re accruing debt.
But beneath the novelty lies a deeper issue: GenAI is changing the shape of tactical work faster than teams are updating their rituals. It’s not just a new tool, it’s a new layer of process friction.
This article is about that gap. Not the tech, but the tactical illusions it creates. We’ll map the debt that accumulates when prompting replaces thinking, when outputs aren’t reviewed, and when workflows get padded with AI theatre. And then — most importantly — we’ll show how to fix it.
Prompting Is Not a Magic Trick — It’s a Tactical Design Choice
A junior PM pastes a vague prompt into ChatGPT: “Write a user story for our new AI feature.” The model returns something plausible—but misaligned. It references user personas they never use. Nobody questions it. The ticket gets shipped. It tanks.
This is what happens when teams treat GenAI like a brainstorm partner instead of a tactical tool.
Most prompts are too soft to be useful. They lack shape, constraint, or system awareness. The result is “synthetic fluency”—outputs that sound smart but introduce subtle misalignments that compound over time. The risk isn’t that the AI is wrong. It’s that no one checks.
Instead, treat prompting like interaction design. Use role-based scaffolds that clarify intent and encode constraints:
Example:
“You are a product manager breaking down raw user feedback. Return 3 functional insights in bullet format, each tagged with confidence level and linked to a specific workflow breakpoint.”
Now your prompt isn’t a guess. It’s a lens.
Workflow Theatre — When Integration Lacks Infrastructure
A team uses Claude to generate daily stand-up summaries. They’re brilliant—clear, concise, human-sounding. Nobody reads them. They live in Notion limbo. No ritual. No handoff. No feedback loop.
This is Workflow Theatre: tooling without tactics, integration without impact.
A one-off prompt is not integration. A ritual is. Tactical integration means assigning AI a defined job within your team’s flow—not as an aside. It must have a cadence, an owner, a QA step, and a visible downstream effect.
Pick one place to start: story shaping, retro summaries, internal changelogs, release notes. Don’t do it all. Do one thing well.
Example:
“During retro, we’ll have AI summarise all key Slack threads tagged #incident. PMs review and surface one learning per sprint. If it’s useful twice in a row, it becomes ritual.”
Without that loop? You’re just automating content for the void.
Audit the AI Layer Before It Becomes Debt
Three months into their “AI-first” experiment, a startup checks their metrics. Time saved? Unknown. Quality impact? Unclear. Nobody tracked how GenAI was used—or what it replaced.
AI can become invisible debt—adding friction instead of removing it.
You wouldn’t onboard a new hire without tracking their output. Treat GenAI the same. What did it do? What worked? What failed? What did it almost replace but didn’t?
Build a lightweight audit mechanism:
- Keep a doc of “AI Wins & Warnings”
- Add 3 questions to your retro:
- Where did AI save us time?
- Where did it mislead us?
- What should we stop using it for?
And crucially—codify the edge of its utility. GenAI can reword a ticket. It can’t sense your team’s velocity, read the subtext of stakeholder politics, or see the risk behind a roadmap commit.
Add a “Trust Boundary” to your prompt templates:
“This output is only valid if __ remains true.”
That’s how you prevent hallucinated outputs from becoming misaligned sprints.
Conclusion: From Prompt-and-Pray to Prompt-with-Purpose
Prompt-and-Pray isn’t a sin. It’s just a starting point. But if you don’t evolve beyond it, you’re not scaling insight—you’re scaling illusion.
Treat GenAI like a new teammate: train it, review it, give it rituals. Tactical debt builds in the gaps between tooling and team behaviour. Pay it down by embedding AI in places where intent, context, and cadence already exist.
You don’t need more AI. You need sharper prompts, tighter rituals, and clear boundaries.
That’s not innovation. That’s product thinking.
Tactical Takeaways
Escape Prompt-and-Pray
- Use prompt scaffolds: Role → Intent → Format → Constraint
- Assign one repeatable AI job: Stand-ups, Changelogs, Story mapping
- Add QA and sign-off rules: Never ship unchecked content
- Track AI impact in retros: What saved time? What added risk?
- Define your Trust Boundaries: “This output is only valid if…”
